Oh man, this was supposed to be a post way back in December, but I didn’t get around to it for reasons I’ll talk about later.
Year-end Updates! In 2014 I got one story published, “Abomasum” at Theme of Absence. 18th Wall also released its Anthology “Those Who Live Long Forgotten” which contains my story “Painted Hounds.” This was less of a publication rate than 2013 for me, but both of the acceptances were paid, which was not the case for my work in 2013. I also submitted to fewer places than I had in 2013 which was my first year of trying to get my work out there. In 2014 I did 16 submissions, compared to 2013’s 25. 
However, in 2013 I didn’t really know what I was doing, and hadn’t quite figured out how to determine if my work was a good fit for a publication or not (or what the difference between literary and genre fiction was, so a good deal of literary magazines had to deal with my horror submissions), so my submissions in 2014, while fewer, counted for more.
Now, the reason I stopped existing as a person on the digital plane, and basically the real one as well:
In December I got a new job and moved. I was initially really excited about the job, especially after seven months of job-searching and being unemployed. This job was supposedly part time, so I thought I would still have time for writing and keeping up with this blog. As well as other basic things like interacting with other people while not at work, saying more than four words to my roommate, sleeping, eating, and showering. Turns out this was not the case, and by part-time, the job actually meant 65 hours a week, six days a week, consecutive 12-hour or more workdays. I was having stress nightmares all the time, but it wasn’t even stuff worth writing up and putting on this blog, just really banal stuff like crashing the delivery truck, or forgetting a parcel. I stopped being able to eat regularly, and would just throw up from stress every time I tired to, and would also get home so late that all I could manage to do was crawl into bed, forget trying to put food in the microwave.
At first it just seemed like I’d have to cut out stuff like on workdays, and save writing, videogames, seeing friends, and interacting with my roommate for my one day off. But then I also had to do all my chores and errands in one day, leaving me room to do just one fun thing per Sunday. Even that got too much as fatigue set in, and I barely managed to slog through chores before returning to my room to literally sit and stare at nothing for hours until I went to bed. The high point of my life became when I got to sleep, or when I managed to eat a little food.
At the end of my unemployment and right before I started work, I’d finally started to develop good writing habits. I’d abandoned the “1000 words a day paradigm” which had left me burned out and unable to write anything for days after anytime I tried it. I was writing a little every day, and have even managed to healthily work up to 1000 words on some days. I kept it up the first two weeks of work too and was hopeful about that. But then fatigue set in and I just completely stopped – I didn’t even have the energy to open the excel document to write in a zero.
So I dealt with that job for 2 months (although it seemed far longer than that), and then quit. Meaning I’m back on the job hunt, but that I don’t have to pick eating or sleeping at night. And to write again, which right now sounds rally good, but in a few more weeks I’m going to be panicking if I don’t find more work. However, I do think it was overall the right choice to make, and am not super worried about the immediate future at this point.
Wish me luck!
Monster Repository 